Every third person in the world is a drama queen. And crying 'victim,' especially when you're not really a victim in any real way, feels good. It feels good to cry victim if you're not one.

Loving your language means a command of its vocabulary beyond the level of the everyday.

No longer can we measure compassion by how much we spend on poverty but how many people we help to lift out of poverty.

I think what Obama does more than his amazing speaking ability is he's able to connect with voters. And it's that hope that he brings out in American citizens that we are all hungry for, that people get excited about Sen. Obama.

The black conservative is responsible for making people question an idea that racism must be extinct before black people can overcome. Understanding that our goal is to thrive despite racism rather than fetishizing it is, in fact, the central ideological plank of people deemed "black conservatives." This is a coherent position, but that can be hard to perceive, given the way that race has been discussed in our land over the past 40 years or so.

Racism is not dead. Definitely, there are these biases.

I don't think that we really know a whole lot about Barack Obama at all that you would really call distinctive.